Since 2021, school shootings have been worryingly on the rise. In fact, according to CNN, each subsequent year has set new records since 2008 with 73, 79, and 82 incidents in each respective year up to 2023. This year has already seen 50 school shooting incidents, and sadly, that number is expected to rise.
It is the responsibility of law enforcement to protect schools from such shootings, as violence becomes more commonplace. Yet, in the wake of the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia earlier this month, questions arise on the efficacy of law enforcement response. This is especially so with many news outlets such as ABC reporting that the mother of the suspected shooter sent a warning to school officials 30 minutes before the shooting. This uncovered fact provides a new perspective on the difficulty law enforcement has on stopping school shootings. Hoax school threats have plagued schools for years and are the real danger to adequately preventing violence from happening to schools. According to NPR, “Threats to schools have forced lockdowns and canceled classes in at least a dozen states,” and in “West Virginia alone, there have been more than 200 threats against schools” within a single week. This is the real issue that schools and law enforcement are facing and the root cause for school shootings that must be fixed.
In order to curb the number of hoax threats, the punishment for committing one must be harsher. A Tennessee school board wanted to clarify the law regarding punishments for school threats in order to first assess the original credibility of the threat and to increase punishment for threats deemed credible. As reported by Huntsville News, “School Board Member Ben Connor told [Huntsville News] ‘When passed, this resolution will be an important statement to the Tennessee General Assembly to address and correct the wording of the legislation regarding credible threats of mass violence so that we as a school system and local law enforcement have a better ability to address and respond to actual credible threats to our schools.’”
In other areas, law enforcement officials have taken it upon themselves to punish anyone who posed a threat, hoax or not. This manner of placing the hammer down on committers of hoax threats sends a message to the rest of the community to not try and send such threats. By setting an example of minors committing felony crimes, the number of hoax threats diluting the credible threats will go down and enable law enforcement to respond much faster to threats. This manner of public shaming, especially for minors, is criticized. Reported by ABC, “Kathleen Miksits is the mother of two middle schoolers in Volusia County. She believes students and parents need to understand the toll these threats take on their community. Miksits kept her kids home one day this week after students at their school was targeted by a threat. Still, she struggles with the thought that this 11-year-old boy may never live this down. ‘Kids say things that they don’t mean. Or they don’t understand what they’re saying,’ she said. ‘But on the other hand, this is an extremely serious matter and we keep having kids die.’”
The excuse of “kids being kids” has been used extensively to justify the immature actions of minors. Yet, when something as serious as threatening to shoot up a school is said, it is incredibly insensitive to the rest of the children and families attending that school. Fun jokes with friends is one thing, however, hoax threats towards a school are much more serious, using up precious resources and threatening the lives of all the students attending. Thus, there must be an increase in punishment, no matter the age, to ensure that jokes about school violence and hoax threats are not made.
Unfortunately, the reality of modern society makes school shootings inevitable. There will always be an extreme case where law enforcement is not able to prevent or react quickly enough to a credible threat. It is then thus: the only way to stop school shootings is by incarcerating those who make hoax threats and sending a warning to others to not make those same mistakes.
